


Adoration of the Shepherd

by betts



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Age Difference, Blow Jobs, Caring John Winchester, Cunnilingus, Dom/sub Undertones, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Manhandling, Mildly Dubious Consent, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Pushy Bottoms, Sexual Coercion, Size Kink, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-30
Updated: 2015-03-30
Packaged: 2018-03-20 11:21:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3648444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betts/pseuds/betts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not the first time Jo’s run off, and it probably won’t be the last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adoration of the Shepherd

**Author's Note:**

> **PLEASE READ:**
> 
> A grand majority who have received an email about this fic probably immediately disregarded it. Of the remaining few of you who at least clicked on it to see why the hell Betty Days wrote a Jo/John fic, I thank you, and I hope this A/N clears things up enough for you to be willing to proceed.
> 
> I've heard a lot of, "That ship really squicks me out," and I'm not sure if it's the age difference or just that John Winchester is involved, but basically this fic was borne of a lot of JDM feels upon his appearance at VegasCon 2015. John Winchester has always been a favorite character of mine, and while I lament what the show has done to him over the years, I believe the intent of his character was different than what it has become.
> 
> This fic is mostly me trying to fix the character. It's about 25% porn and 75% character exposition/exploration. That said, I've altered canon slightly in regards to John's character in the following ways:
> 
> 1\. John has undiagnosed and untreated PTSD and MDD. A majority of his (as he perceives) regrettable actions are caused by lapses in an accurate perspective of his environment.  
> 2\. While John is admittedly neglectful of Dean and Sam, he has never once laid a finger on them. For all intents and purposes, John is kind of a shitty dad, but he's not a monster like they portray him in the later seasons of the show.  
> 3\. The whole side-family with Adam doesn't exist. 
> 
> In reference to the dubious consent tag, it's more reverse dubcon, in that John, who is the one with the power in the situation, is the one saying no, and Jo is the one proceeding anyway. Jo provides her explicit consent throughout.
> 
> There is a lot of controversy in this fic, traditionalist and/or non-progressive thinking. These do not mirror my personal perspectives. They are the opinions of the characters I have developed, so please do not confuse them with my own.
> 
> Given the nature of this fic, I have preemptively disabled anonymous commenting. I put a lot of love into this, and I'm pretty proud of it, so I don't want it to be tainted by anons telling me I'm a filthy human being for writing it.
> 
>  
> 
> **Trigger warning for PTSD episode/flashback.**
> 
>  
> 
> Big thanks to [horrorfemme1138](http://www.horrorfemme1138.tumblr.com) for coining the ship name "Jo2".
> 
> As always, thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy.

El Greco’s is the definition of sleaze, and that’s saying something coming from a guy who spends most of his time in the shittiest dive bars in the country.

The smell of smoke, booze, and sweat is as familiar as it is nauseating, and John takes a seat in front of the stage. It’s small and narrow, with two poles on either end. This place is just another cookie-cutter strip joint, complete with red carpet on the walls and Christmas lights around the molding.

He got a tip from a Missouri-based hunter named Ted whom he’d only distantly heard of. Kansas City’s never been John’s gig, but he’d do anything for Ellen, even drag his sorry ass across the country and stop a hunt to haul her daughter back home.

It’s not the first time Jo’s run off, and it probably won’t be the last.

John orders a whiskey and hopes to high-hell that Ted was wrong, that little Joanna Beth hasn’t actually found her way to this shit-shack.

The next show’s music starts up and John already has a knot in his gut, the kind he gets when something bad’s about to go down. He got it in ‘Nam. He got it the night Mary died. He’s gotten it with every sad piece of hell that clawed its way up from the pit just to get sent right back down again at the vengeful hands of a broken man.

He watches as the first girl opens the curtains and saunters out onto the stage before swinging her leg around a pole. The next girl follows. They’re wearing red-sequined bikinis and feathery masks that cover their faces.

Granted, it’s been a few years since he’s seen Jo, but one of the girls is black and the other is a curvy red-head. Neither of them fit the bill.

The third girl comes out, shimmies her way to the front of the stage and lifts herself onto the second pole directly in front of John. From his angle, he can’t get a good read. She’s got blonde hair, sure, but she’s thin and toned, petite breasts hiked up in a shiny red bikini top. Her hips are narrow, and her body glides around the pole, fluid and graceful like water.

There’s no way this is little Jo Harvelle, John thinks.

This girl is—fuck— _hot_. She drapes her body around the pole and lifts herself completely off the ground, legs over her head as she spins around upside-down.

It’s mesmerizing and hypnotizing and—fucking hell, John can already feel himself getting hard in the leg of his jeans.

He bites back a gulp of whiskey and steels himself to pay attention. Objectively. He’s on a _job_ , for godsakes. He’s not looking for a damn hook-up in the form of a cute blonde whose legs are falling open into the splits mid-air right in front of him.

The girl rights herself and dances up and down the stage, does a little act with her co-stars, and makes her way to the floor while men shove bills in her g-string.

She passes directly in front of John, and for a brief moment, a pair of familiar, soft brown eyes meet his.

John’s sip of whiskey goes down the wrong pipe and he chokes on it.

Jo stops dead in her tracks and lifts her mask to the top of her head, her bright smile falling with recognition and replaced by panic. She backs up toward the stage, a stream of curses escaping her lips as she searches for all the potential exits.

She’s too far away and the music is too loud to say anything, and he can’t risk making a scene, so John stands from his table and glares at her. He hunter signs, “ _You, me, outside in five,”_ before slapping a twenty on the table and heading out the front door.

***

_Fuck, fuck, fucking hell, goddamn, son of a bitch._

Of course her mother sent _John Winchester_ after her. She couldn’t have just let her be, or maybe even come after her herself, no, it had to be John. The best hunter in probably the whole goddamn world, the last man who ever saw her father alive, the guy everybody looks at like he’s some kind of monster-ganking messiah. John fucking Winchester.

Jo is _so fucked._

So much for paying off Ted to keep his damn trap shut. _Fuck_ Ted.

She’s mentally drawing a blank as she makes her way through the back of the club after her show. There’s a quiet voice in her head asking her why the hell she doesn’t just duck and run, take these precious few moments to pack up her shit and hit the nearest bus stop.

But she knows that whatever exit she chooses, John will probably be waiting for her. He just seems like that kind of guy, to predict her moves before she even decides to make them.

She squares her shoulders before pushing her way out the door. Just as she suspected, John is there, leaning against some Frankenstein of a monster truck, arms across his broad chest.

She’s still in her costume, but his eyes don’t stray from hers, and she approaches him with as much confidence as she can muster.

John’s gaze absently trails down her body before he catches himself and squeezes his eyes shut. “Dammit,” he curses, shrugging his Carhart off his shoulders and shoving it in her direction. “Put this on. It’s cold.”

She takes the jacket with an ounce of smugness and drapes it over herself, pulling it closed around her. The sleeves fall down half a foot over her hands and the hem of it brushes the tops of her knees. It smells like plain soap and whatever it is that makes men smell like they do, all musky and spiced _._

“Get your stuff,” he says, meeting her eyes once more. His expression is blank, unreadable. She can’t tell if he’s angry or disappointed or maybe just treating this like any other hunt, emotionless, like the soldier he’s trained to be. “I’m taking you back home.”

Jo crosses her arms over her chest too, fists balled up into the soft warmth of the sleeves, and lifts her chin. She means to sound tougher than she does when she replies, “I’m an adult. You can’t make me do anything.” It comes out whiny and childish. She might as well have stomped her foot, too, thrown a proper tantrum.

A corner of his mouth twitches up in a sardonic half-smile. “No, but I’ll tell your mother where I found you. You come with me right now and I’ll tell her you got a nice little serving gig at Biggerson’s. I’ll say we bumped into each other, had a heart to heart over coffee, convinced you to come back home.”

Jo clenches her jaw and doesn’t reply.

“Or I’ll call her up right now and tell her I found you at a strip joint in Kansas City, taking your clothes off for men three times your age. I’ll add in that your boss is a _real_ nice guy named Rick and he’s letting you crash at his place for a while.”

“It’s Roy,” Jo says defensively. She pauses, shoulders slumping, the edge of her voice wavering away as she asks, “How’d you know that?”

“Because it’s a goddamn cliché, Jo.” He pinches his nose for a moment and says, “What the hell are you even doing here anyway?”

“Making an honest living.” She nods to punctuate the conviction of her statement, but that sounds childish too, naïve, and she wishes the ground would open up and swallow her whole.

She came out here to get away from her overbearing mother, to be an _adult_ , and two months of making it on her own are dashed away under the scrutiny John Winchester, of all people. She’d spent her days looking for leads on a hunt, salted and burned her way through a few hauntings, scraped by with some bruises to her body and ego, but for the most part she was happy this way, out on her own in a strange city with no familiar faces for miles.

Stripping just sweetened the pot a bit, was the cherry on top of a bad-girl sundae. It was heady and liberating being stared at and ogled like she was a woman and not just Bill Harvelle’s bratty little kid.

She works hard. She’s proud of herself. It _is_ an honest living.

John takes a deep breath. “Honest? Jesus, Jo. You only even turned legal, what? A couple months ago?”

“Over a year ago, thank you. I’m nineteen.”

“Jesus Christ,” John says with an exasperated sigh. “Just…go get your stuff. We got a long drive ahead of us.”

***

John waits in his truck for Jo to pack up her things and hopefully change out of her get-up. Apparently _Roy_ or whatever his name is lives above the club—real classy—so she just has to go up there, grab her stuff, and sneak out.

At this point, he’s grateful he didn’t have to resort to tossing her over his shoulder and throwing her in the truck. Or worse, making good on his bluff and calling Ellen.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and flips it open. There are a dozen missed calls from Dean over the past few days, one from Ellen, and six voicemails.

He presses the call button, puts in his PIN, and lifts the phone to his ear. The first message is from Ellen:

_“Just seeing how it’s goin’. Call me.”_

He deletes it and waits for the next one.

_“Hey Dad. I’m in Denver. Not sure where you are, but I found a job for us. Could really use your help.”_

He deletes it. The next sounds more urgent.

_“Hey Dad. I’m lost on this case. Lot of people dying. Can’t seem to crack it. Give me a call so we can talk through it or something. Thanks. Bye.”_

Delete. This one’s resentful.

_“Hey Dad. It was a haunted asylum in Denver. Don’t worry…not that you would’ve anyway…I got it taken care of. Heading west if you want to meet up.”_

Delete. The next one starts with a sigh.

_“Look, I don’t know where the hell you are but I’m starting to get a little freaked out. It’s been two weeks, Dad. Call me. Please. Just…something. Let me know you’re okay. Alive, at least. Anything.”_

He deletes it and is waiting through the timestamp of the next one when his passenger door squeaks open.

Another pained, _“Hey, Dad–”_ barely reaches his ear as he lowers the phone and snaps it shut.

Jo tosses her duffel in the cab and grabs the handle by the windshield with one hand, the seat rest in the other, then hoists herself inside. “Not too much different than a pole,” she jokes, laughing nervously.

Thank whatever non-existent god is paying attention to him that Jo is back in plainclothes, plus his jacket.

Jo gets situated and layers of guilt begin to stab at the scrap metal that passes for John’s heart. He abandoned his boy, _again_. He had impure thoughts about a girl three decades younger than him. He hasn’t checked in with said girl’s mother. Hell, to top it all off, he lets himself think about Sammy, too.

The path John is on has only one destination, he reminds himself. It’s best to stay distant; it'll be easier on them when he’s finally gone. They can’t grieve his loss if they’ve already lost him.

He side-eyes Jo and jams his key in the ignition. “Seatbelt,” he orders, and throws it into gear, leaving El Greco’s in the dust.

***

They pull over a few hours later at a motel called the Lion’s Den. Its neon sign boasts cable TV and hourly rates.

Jo is curled up in the passenger seat of the truck, John’s jacket keeping her warm in the chill breeze of early spring. She can feel the body glitter still glued to her chest and legs, can smell the cheap floral perfume that all the girls wear, but it’s mixed now with the warm, natural smell of John’s jacket and the cab of his truck.

She’s in what she wore to the club that night, a plain t-shirt and jeans, worn-down flats on cold, numbed-over toes. Her rucksack is under her feet in the footwell, carrying everything she owns. It was her dad’s, back in the day, when he was in ‘Nam. In the dim light of the flickering neon, she can see _Harvelle_ in faded stencil letters across the side of the green canvas.

She feels filthy and ashamed all of a sudden, facing reality in the darkness of the middle of nowhere while John pulls into the cracked asphalt parking lot of the motel.

The drive had been tense and silent. John probably didn’t even notice Jo staring at him out of the corner of her eye, looking up and down his stoic, still profile; sharp nose and cheekbones, black hair disheveled, week-old salt-and-pepper beard covering the lower half of his face. There are bags under his eyes, so prominent they’re almost cartoonish. _Gaunt_ is the word that comes to mind, and Jo wishes a little bit that she had the courage to ask him how he’s doing, but wishes more that he’d have the courage to answer.

She’d never really _looked_ at John before. Like everyone who passed through the Roadhouse, John had always just been part of the background noise, a middle-aged white dude looking for answers in the shape of literal monsters instead of facing the ones in his head.

Jo’s life might be a cliché, but John’s is worse.

Now, though, it’s like Jo is seeing him for the first time, and for a moment, she understands deep-down in her gut why everyone talks about him with such reverence and respect. He carries himself with this genuine authority, not like other people do, with their machismo functioning as a flimsy cover-up for self-doubt and a lack of worth. John Winchester, however, is the personification of the phrase, _Speak softly and carry a big stick_.

His calmness is borderline-terrifying when he breaks the silence in the stifling stillness of the cab. “Wait here. I’ll get us a room.”

As he slams the door shut and makes his way to the motel lobby, the voice in the back of Jo’s head urges her once more to run. She looks around and realizes then that there’s nowhere _to_ run. They’re surrounded by nothing but dirt and inky black sky, and she doesn’t remember the last gas station they passed.

She’s not even sure where they are.

 _Great hunting skills, Harvelle_ , she chides herself. _Way to get lost. Real professional._

She sighs and curls up tighter into John’s coat.

***

John tosses his duffel on the bed nearest to the door and flips on a light. The room is filthy and barren, just like every other motel he books.

It suits his needs well enough, though. No use getting comfortable. No use feeling at home when there’s no real home to go back to anyway.

The demon burnt it to the ground, along with the rest of his pathetic life.

He sits on the bed and unties the laces of his boots while Jo walks past him to the furthest double, shrugging off her bag from her shoulder.

She stands there a moment, looking small and lost in his coat.

“You alright?” John asks, pulling off his first boot and moving to the second.

She nods. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just gonna…take a shower.”

“Knock yourself out.” He flips off his other boot and looks at her again. She hesitates at the zipper of his jacket, holding it between her fingers like she doesn’t want to take it off. It’s one of those moments where John can feel his heart thudding in his chest, bouncing with echoes of emotions he usually drowns in booze and hunting.

She slides it off her narrow shoulders and lays it beside her bag. She’s back to her old self, all soft, simple fabrics and no makeup. Her skin shimmers with whatever glittery shit strippers wear, the only shadow remaining of the alternate identity she’s managed to build while living on her own.

John realizes he’s staring and busies himself with taking off his overshirt instead.

Jo unzips her bag and takes out a Dopp kit, a tan leather satchel that looks as much like her father’s as her duffel. It should be incongruous to her innate femininity, but it’s not. It suits her just as well as it suited Bill. John remembers the bag well, even though it’s been years since he and Bill hunted together, but it brings back memories of even shittier motels, hunts where he barely scraped by with his life, and that final one where Bill didn’t.

While he looks down at his wedding ring still nearly welded to the skin of his ring finger, he wonders what else she carries around of Bill’s.

Jo makes her way to the bathroom and closes the door behind her. The sound of rushing water follows, and John lies back against the ancient floral duvet. He considers flipping off the light, but keeps it on so that Jo can see when she comes back out.

He covers his eyes in the crook of his elbow, other hand on his stomach, and falls asleep before the water turns off.

***

Jo had forgotten to bring a change of clothes into the shower with her, so she wraps a towel around her chest and inches the door open.

It feels absurd as she does it, because she’s been making a living off of being naked in front of people for the past couple months, but around John it’s different. She doesn’t want to be a stripper to him, doesn’t want to be her stage persona or even the girl everyone knew her as in Kansas City. She went by her middle name there, Beth, and it felt normal, natural.

But she wouldn’t want John to call her that. And she doesn’t want him to think of her as Jo either, at least, not with all the connotations that come with it: Jo, the cute Roadhouse bartender; Jo, with a dangerous right hook if you sass her; Jo, the angry teen with fits of rage that get her laughed at by hunters and scolded by her mother; Jo, who’s too cute and young and pretty to hunt.

She wants John to see her as something else. She wants him to look at her like a woman but not treat her like an object, and she considers, briefly, why that’s so hard to accomplish with virtually everyone she’s ever met.

John is sprawled out on his back on the bed, breathing deep and even. He’s still in his jeans and a white v-neck t-shirt, tall enough that his bare feet hang a bit off the end of the bed.

Jo looks at him again, like she did before, but this time in the light, letting her eyes trail over his body, sharp lines of functional muscle underneath his clothes. It’s hard to tell when he’s dressed in so many layers, but he’s a bit on the thin side, probably from long days of hunting, forgetting to eat, or maybe just not affording to.

She wonders how many meals he’s skipped in his life so he could feed his sons instead, and then how many days he’s skipped being with his sons so he could hunt. It’s a vicious cycle, the life; Jo knows that. It turns people dark, makes them sacrifice too much for a greater good that doesn’t really exist.

She wonders, too, what he’d look like if his wife had never died, if he’d be pudgy at the tummy, if he’d have laugh lines on his face, if he’d have divorced at some point or if they’d have stayed together, maybe had another kid, maybe had a daughter.

Lastly, she wonders if—no, she _knows_ —he thinks these things for himself, the what-ifs, driving down silent, empty stretches between backwater towns for hours on end, fueled only by vengeance and slowly waning survivalist instinct.

He probably doesn’t see it, probably doesn’t even see _her_ , but they’re not so different, John and Jo. She gets him, and if he ever wanted, he’d probably get her, too.

She zips open her duffel and pulls out a tank top and shorts, dropping the towel with the tiniest bit of excitement at maybe waking John, letting him get an eyeful before covering herself back up.

He doesn’t wake up though, so she shimmies into her plain panties and soft sleep-shorts, tosses her tank over her head, and shoves her stuff off the mattress. It lands on the ground with a heavy thunk, but John still doesn’t stir.

She flips off the light and crawls under the covers, staring at the ridges of the plastic ceiling, the slats of neon making a halo around the tightly-pulled curtains. It’s quiet in the room, almost silent but for the occasional truck driving by and John’s steady breathing. Even the fan is off in the unit under the window, because it’s cold outside but just warm enough inside that turning on the heat would make it too hot.

The pillow and mattress are both too firm, the sheets scratchy. She shifts in discomfort, and finds herself turned toward John, staring openly again at his profile, chest rising and falling. She’s hit with this intense wave of desire for him, like being yanked at the navel, a familiar jolting pressure between her legs. After hours of watching him, she wants to know what his skin looks like underneath his shirt, if he has tattoos. She wants to feel him and taste him. Mostly, she wants to be wanted by him, touched by the hands that have always moved with unyielding confidence and assuredness. She wants to be seen by him for who she really is.

And she wants to unravel the mystery that is John Winchester.

But she’s not one to wait idly by until what she wants is given to her. She remembers, then, that behind all the doubt and self-consciousness, she’s still Joanna Beth Harvelle.

So she throws off her covers and does something about it.

***

John wakes up to a darkened motel room and the feel of the mattress dipping beside him. His hand is automatically halfway to the knife stashed under his pillow before he realizes it’s Jo.

Despite his heart hammering in his chest, he closes his eyes again and immediately falls back into a half sleep.

“Didn’t your father ever teach you not to sneak up on a vet?” he asks in a slurred drawl.

“I didn’t sneak up on you,” Jo whispers back even though they’re alone. “I made a fuck-ton of noise. I can’t help it you sleep like the dead.”

“Ha ha,” John retorts before noting the fact that Jo is lying down next to him on the bed. _His_ bed. “Something wrong with your side of the room?”

He can hear and feel the shift of her shoulders as she shrugs. “Can’t sleep,” she mutters.

“So you wake me up instead. Real nice of you.”

“I just–” she begins, and cuts herself off, responding instead by sidling up next to him so that her chest is pressed up against his arm.

He freezes, tensed as he feels soft cotton shifting over his bicep, warm skin against his shoulder.

“Jo…” he says, a note of warning in his tone. He keeps his eyes closed, not wanting to look at whatever she’s wearing.

Or _not_ wearing, which is the bigger problem right now.

Defiant, she asks, “What?”

He’s too tired to explain to her why she can’t do this, can’t just climb in bed with him and expect him to—to do whatever the fuck she’s expecting him to do.

“Go back to bed,” he replies, and adds, “your _own_ bed,” when she opens her mouth to argue.

“No,” she says after a moment, like it took a concentrated effort to defy an order—and yeah, that’s hot, too—with a note of finality in her voice. She continues, more confident this time, “The only way to get me out of this bed is to carry me out.”

Thanks to almost two decades of dealing with Sam, John knows how to handle this level of stubbornness.

With a frustrated grunt, John sits up, and, in a single swift motion, tucks one arm under Jo’s shoulders and the other under her knees, then cradles her in his lap as he throws his feet off the mattress and stands. She weighs hardly anything, probably one-twenty sopping wet, and he tosses her gently onto the empty bed across from their shared nightstand.

She bounces and immediately crosses her arms over her chest, tucked under her tits. He can barely see anything, but he can make out the glare in her eyes, the way her lips purse in anger. He lets his eyes linger down her body, down the simple white tank top covering her torso, her nipples tented in the fabric over the swell of her small breasts. She’s wearing baby blue short-shorts, too, the kind with drawstrings on the front and that probably say _Angel_ on the back.

John clenches his jaw and turns away before he’s caught staring again. “There. Now go to sleep,” he mumbles.

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child,” she spits back at him.

“Then don’t act like one.” He climbs under the covers this time, keeping his back to her and curling onto his side.

He’s barely drifted off to sleep again before his mattress dips once more, and this time Jo is crawling under the covers with him.

 _“Jo…”_ he grits out, budding anger in his voice.

She lifts his arm and curls herself into his embrace like it’s nothing, like it’s the most natural thing in the world for her to be doing, tucking her head under his chin so that her forehead is pressed against his sternum. Her hair is still damp from the shower and she smells like hotel shampoo. It’s a lot better than the flowery shit she was drenched in earlier.

She takes his hand, and before he can think to react—still drowsy, exhausted from being awake for almost forty-eight hours—shoves it into the front of her shorts. Her skin is fever-hot and supple-soft. Downy hair meets his touch and he absently, sleepily glides the pad of his middle finger into her folds, dipping into slick wetness and bringing it up toward her clit. It’s like he’s moving on auto-pilot, some dark part of his mind following through with whatever order he’s been given, thoughtless. It’s what he was trained to do.

He swipes down and up a few more times with the barest, teasing touch, mind filled with the feel of a small body writhing against him, tiny hitched sounds emitting from her throat as John works at her slit.

Muffled into his chest, voice bordering on breathless, she says, “Just do this for me, alright? This one thing. You’re dragging me kicking and screaming back to a place I don’t wanna be. It’s the least you can do.”

It takes a miracle of willpower to forcibly detangle himself from her, pulling his hand out of her shorts and feeling the cool air of the room ghost over the wetness of his fingers, spell broken. He rolls onto his back so that they’re no longer touching, tense as he takes a deep breath and wills his body back to calmness. He’s angry, more with himself than with her that it took him a solid thirty seconds to break out of whatever the hell that was.

She growls in frustration, and John tries to keep the nervous edge out of his voice as he says, “I don’t know what you’re angling for here, kiddo. It’s my job to bring you home, that’s it. If you want something else, you’re barking up the wrong damn tree.”

“But–” she starts, but John interrupts her.

“Don’t talk back. I don’t know what your life’s been like these past few months, but you’re not gonna bribe me into taking you back to that dive.”

He covers his eyes with the crook of his elbow again, stifling the electricity he can feel building underneath his skin.

“You think this is a _bribe?”_ Jo asks, and the mattress shifts again. He feels her body heat leaving and is relieved this game is finally over.

There’s also an ounce of him that’s disappointed, too, but he shoves the thought away before it can even develop.

A weight drapes itself across his hips. He opens his eyes to find Jo staring down at him, straddling him at the waist with an arm on either side of his head. Her hair cascades down and frames his face, the ends of it tickling his cheek and neck.

“You’re an idiot,” she says with a sneer.

John’s eyes widen a fraction. His heart is racing but his brain is sluggish to catch up. “What did you just call me?”

She leans down, brushes her lips against the shell of his ear, and whispers, “This isn’t a bribe, and you’re an idiot for thinking it is _.”_

He clenches his teeth and takes a deep breath through his nostrils. The air smells sweet around Jo, intoxicating almost, and John is reaching the end of his patience with this whole damn situation. He’s tired, he’s angry, and worst of all, he’s horny. It’s not a pleasant combination, and definitely not one that a nineteen year old girl should be spurring on.

“Get off of me, Jo,” John says evenly, meeting her eyes in the dimness of the room as she sits back up, smug, the neon casting drastic shadows over body. She looks simultaneously evil and angelic, and he hopes to hell she can’t feel him hardening in the leg of his jeans. _“Now.”_

“No,” she quips at him. There’s a teasing lilt to her voice that John wants to take right out of her, replace with gasps and moans and cries of pleasure.

“You’re trying my patience. I’ll say it one more time: get off of me.”

She leans down again, this time placing a small kiss on his neck before murmuring against it, “Or what?”

The touch sends a shiver down his spine, and something inside him finally snaps.

***

John sits up quickly, and Jo gasps, caught off-guard. He wraps his arms around her back and lifts her up, turning them both over and laying her on her back in one fluid motion.

He settles himself between her legs and she wraps them around him on instinct, gyrating her hips against the fly of his jeans until the fabric of her panties slides against her.

He’s got an arm on either side of her head, and their faces are an inch apart. This perspective is different than Jo has ever seen him. He’s no longer the emotionless soldier who dragged her out of El Greco’s, but the impassioned being in the fire that always dances behind his eyes.

Jo knew it was there, knew she could find it if she just pushed hard enough.

She can see the lines of his face, all the wrinkles and nicks and scars. He smells faintly of whiskey, and his body is hot and heavy against her. It feels enormous, towering, and he’s staring at her, _into_ her like she wanted him to. It’s satisfying and thrilling and a little bit terrifying, but it's the good kind of terrifying, like getting on a rollercoaster. It takes the wind right out of her until her body is nothing but a livewire, dependent entirely on his touch which he still isn’t providing.

“You sure you want this?” he asks in a deep rumble that she can feel all the way to her toes, and makes her cunt throb with want.

In response, she reaches down with both hands and gropes at the button of his jeans.

He grabs her wrists in one of his giant hands and pins them above her head. “I asked,” he begins, body stilled above her, hovering so that she can’t rut against him, “if you’re sure,” he pauses to pull further away when she shifts her hips toward him again, “you want this.” He punctuates it like it’s a statement, not a question, and her brain is going to unravel if he doesn’t start touching her soon. Right now, it feels more like a mental wrestling match, and she’s losing.

“Yes,” she says finally. “Please just fuck me already.” She’s happy with the breathiness of her tone, thinks it sounds sufficiently sexy.

She continues writhing underneath him to try and dispel the tension in her body, to no avail. She’s completely at his mercy and she hates it and loves it and it’s driving her insane.

He smiles, a small twitch of his lips as he watches her underneath him. “If we do this…” He trails off, then leans down to kiss her. It’s not what she expected, all sweet and slow and infuriatingly innocent. He breaks away again to say, “We’re gonna do it my way, you understand me?” His voice is a deep, quiet rasp that she can comprehend more in vibrations than actual sound.

Impatient, she glares at him, and wants to get this damn show on the road already.

He continues hovering above her, and she doesn’t know how he can hold himself like that, virtually planking his body for the past several minutes without any muscles trembling. God, it’s hot, and it pulses another rush of desire into her veins.

“I asked you a question, Joanna Beth,” he says in his authoritative voice that is _not_ sexy, that doesn’t make her bite her bottom lip and almost whimper with need.

 _“Yes,”_ she says again, still pulling uselessly at his hips with her legs. “Your way, fine. Just… _please.”_ The sexy breathiness is gone now, replaced by a sense of whiny urgency she can no longer control.

He dips down to kiss her again, but right before their lips meet, he pulls away, and she’s left bobbing open-mouthed. A pitiful noise escapes her throat and she squeezes her eyes shut.

“One more thing.”

It comes out needy and angry when she asks, _“What?”_

He leans down and kisses the jut of her jaw, noses his way underneath it and says, “If you want me to stop, you tell me to stop.” He continues peppering her skin with sweet little kisses that are the exact opposite of satisfying, and continues, “Don’t like something, tell me you don’t like it. Don’t spare my feelings. Be vocal, be honest. And for godsakes,” he rolls his hips into her, and it takes her by such surprise that the bottom of her gut falls out like it’s going to land and go nuclear. She takes in a sharp gasp at the friction, but by the time she moves to meet it, it’s gone, and John is back to hovering and pressing light kisses to her skin. _“Relax.”_

Her body goes limp like the command skipped right over her brain and sank into her muscles. Her arms are still pinned but she stops wiggling around, shuffling her feet back and forth against the sheets, tiny whimpers escaping her throat.

She takes a deep breath and feels him smile into the crook of her neck, murmurs a low and resounding, “Good girl,” and fuck if that’s not the hottest thing she’s ever heard. She lets out a groan while her heart flutters in her chest.

He cups the back of her neck and kisses her for real this time, and if she hadn’t been relaxed before, she’s definitely relaxed now. His hand feels enormous against her neck, fingers threaded in her hair. He touches her gently, kisses her with just his lips only until finally parting them with his tongue. She lets him, goes pliant against him as he explores her mouth, deepens the kiss and begins rolling some fervor in it, faster and deeper. She’s never been kissed like this, so thorough, with such focused attention on what _she_ wants instead of him taking what he wants, like every other boy she’s ever been with.

He moves with her instead of against her, slides his knees up so that the backs of her thighs rest on the tops of his. Worn denim meets her skin and it’s infuriating. She wants to feel flesh and hair and sweat, wants to claw and leave marks, but they’re both still fully dressed. It’s only been a few minutes but it feels like it’s been hours.

John’s still got her pinned, still barely moves his body, focused only on her lips and the heat of their kiss. His stubble rasps against her jaw and burns her lips a little, adds an extra layer of feeling that puts her even more on edge than she already is.

He’s silent, too, a sharp contrast to her heavy breathing and hitched breaths and tiny moans.

Breaking the kiss, he asks, “If I let you go, you’re not gonna get grabby again, are you?”

She doesn’t know where it comes from, some deep, dark, fucked-up place in her fucked-out brain, but she replies, “No, sir.”

John’s face goes blank then, and he holds his breath for a solid beat. She can see the muscles in his jaw twitch and his eyes fall shut. She thinks she’s done something wrong, terrified she just fucked it all up; ‘sir’ is what she used to call her _father_ for godsakes, and this, this is just a one-time deal, a—

He grinds against her then, a swift twitch of his hips as a low groan escapes his throat. She can feel the thick swell of his cock against the fly of his jeans, feel the way it bumps up against her pussy and leaves her aching to be filled with it.

It’s the first time he’s ever gut-reacted to anything she’s said or done. He’s always too controlled, too thoughtful and calculating.

So, of course, she pushes the button again. “I’ll be good for you, sir. I promise.”

 _“Fuck,”_ John grits out, squeezing his eyes shut and letting out a shuddering breath. He lets go of her hands above her head, but she keeps them there like she promised she would. He grips her small hips in both of his massive hands and pulls her closer to him, thrusts so that the tip of his hardness is driving right onto her clit.

She could come like this, fully clothed and leaking a massive wet stain into her shorts, with just the potential promise of a huge cock behind too many layers of clothes. It’s the tension that’s killing her, the thrill of affecting a stone giant, a blinding need welling up in her gut that she’s never felt before.

Her muscles are tensed and her breaths grow shallow. She’s so close she can taste it, everything almost narrowed into a single point of intense, exploding pleasure.

She gives up her hold on the pillow, grasps at his back, bunching his shirt in her fist to try and drag him closer, but it’s like trying to move a brick wall.

But John slows and pulls away before she can come, and she lets out a pained sound like she just witnessed a horrific tragedy.

He leans down and kisses her neck. She can feel him smile in this smug way she wants to slap off of him, but she can’t, so she grits her teeth instead.

“Not yet,” he says. “You come when I tell you to, and no sooner.”

She wants to scream, wants to shove John back onto the mattress and fuck herself on him until she comes a thousand times. Instead, she bites out a terse, “Yes, sir.”

John hums against her throat and murmurs, “That’s my good girl.”

The words inexplicably placate her as she edges slowly away from her pent-up position.

“Good girl,” he whispers again absently, trailing down her neck to her chest, pressing more kisses to her sternum. His beard tickles her skin and forces another pulse of wetness out of her cunt.

He reaches up and gently slides the straps her of tank top down her shoulders as he kisses one of her hardened nipples through the fabric. Its sensitivity sends a wash of heat over her body, breath caught in her chest as John pulls down the neckline so that her breasts are exposed.

She’s normally self-conscious about them, used to pad all of her bras when she was in high school. The only time she isn’t is when she’s on stage and, apparently, now, with John lavishing them with attention, licking around the tiny buds until her back arches off the bed.

If she could shift her body in any way to give her enough friction on her clit, she could come like this too, but John’s chest has her pelvis pinned to the mattress. All she can do is gasp and moan and squirm, fist her hands in the pillow above her head and hold on tight.

He moves toward the other nipple—so painfully, horribly slow—and asks, “How many boys you been with?”

The words sound like they’re traveling through water to get to her ears. “Huh?” she replies, forcing her mind to focus on the question and not the tension coursing through her.

“How many boys have you been with?” he asks again, then sucks the other nipple into his mouth.

A startled groan escapes her throat, and she shuts her eyes to remember how to speak. “I don’t know,” she says. “A lot.”

John huffs a laugh against her skin and looks up at her. She opens her eyes to stare back. Despite the darkness, he still looks amused and maybe a little condescending. “Don’t play the whore.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks, pulling herself back together just enough to be irritated.

He keeps her shirt where it is, the top bunched up underneath her breasts, the bottom hiked up above her navel so that it’s just a strip of thin cotton adorning her ribcage. He sinks down further on the mattress until he’s settled between her legs, and just the sight of it—broad shoulders between thin thighs—forces out a low moan from somewhere within her.

“How many boys have you been with?” he asks again, sitting up and tugging at the waistband of her shorts.

She lifts her hips up so he can slide them down and off of her legs, leaving only her soaking wet panties between them.

If he’s not turned on by experience, then he’s turned on by the lack thereof, Jo reasons.

“I haven’t...yet. I mean, I’ve never…” she replies, innocent and a little bit ashamed.

He kisses from the inside of her knee downward. When he reaches the jut of her hip, he says, “Don’t play the virgin.”

She groans in frustration, lowers her hands to pound them on the mattress. “It’s none of your fucking business!” she shouts, strained and whimpering.

He reaches up to shift the crotch of her underwear to the side. The cold air against her cunt feels amazing but still not relieving. His face is inches away from it. He can probably smell her, can probably feel her wetness soaked through her panties where his finger is still hooked in them.

“Don’t play the bitch, either.” She can’t read the inflection in his voice. It’s not stern, but it’s also not kind.

He leans down and places a kiss against the crevice between her hip and her pussy, rough lips against soft hair. He’s so close to her clit she can hardly breathe. She’s an inch away from begging for it, chest tight like she’s about to cry, throw a toddler tantrum because she’s not getting what she wants.

“Stop trying to figure out the right answer and tell the truth.” His breath is hot against her already-fevered cunt. “I don’t want the girl you think I’d like best. I just want you.”

Her heart feels like it’s about to burst. She never thought she’d hear him say those words, never thought he’d openly admit to something like that. It’s then she realizes the truth hurts her to say. It’s so boring and normal and _her_ that she hates it.

“Two!” she finally answers, somewhere between a sob and a shout. “I’ve fucked two guys, a grand total of four times. Are you fucking happy n—”

She’s interrupted by her own startled yelp from John licking a stripe up the length of her slit.

“Good girl,” he whispers once more. His voice is reverent, the vibration of the words against her cunt making her pant out shallow breaths.

Then—thank fucking _God_ —he dives in, pressing the flat of his tongue against her clit and circling it around. It’s so intense she can almost feel the bumps of his tastebuds.

His mouth is huge against her tiny opening, the wiry hair of his beard scratching at the hypersensitive skin of her pussy lips. He laps at her in a slow, methodical way; careful, like he does everything else. He tests and teases. She can feel him paying attention to each response she gives, feels him change what he’s doing based on her reactions.

Within moments, she’s a heaving, writhing mess, only made worse when he lifts off and wets his finger, then presses it slowly into her cunt.

She lets out a low groan and arches her back in response. He drags it in and out of her in time with the swipes of his tongue, and even though her body is pliant and relaxed, a blinding heat still builds at the base of her spine.

She staves it off, relishing the feeling for as long as she can, knows he won’t let her come until she’s begging for it anyway, keeping her lifted at the precipice for agonizing minutes. She forces herself to think of her last salt and burn, the decayed body underneath growing flames. But then she imagines the way John’s shoulders probably look while he digs up graves, all taut-roped and broad and sweaty. She thinks about proper gun maintenance, the steps involved in taking a gun apart and cleaning it, piece by piece. But then she imagines a spirit getting salted at the bad end of John’s shotgun, the way his face would remain blank and stoic as he moved on to the next problem. She thinks about liquor inventory at the Roadhouse, counting bottle after bottle of booze and tallying each one meticulously on her clipboard. But then she imagines John’s fingers wrapped around a whiskey glass, the same fingers that are sliding inside of her as he adds a second and fills her up with them, stretches her open. It’s a sweet burn that makes her buck her hips, but he holds her down, fucks into her in a steady and slow rhythm that pushes her toward coming faster than she thought possible.

She doesn’t know she’s begun speaking until the words are already out of her, breathy, sobbed whimpers that she barely recognizes as her own. “Please, _please_ let me come. I’m so close. _Please.”_

She’s right there, can feel her orgasm pent up in her midsection. She clenches her pussy walls around John’s fingers to keep it at bay, waiting for him to reply.

But he doesn’t. He continues laving at her clit in infuriating circles, too teasing and slow to push her over the edge.

She looks down at him, recognizes the glare he’s giving her because she’s gotten it so many times before in her life, for different things, from different people. He’s telling her with his eyes to calm down and show some respect, that she can’t do anything with fists flying, anger spewing, and expect to get what she wants.

She heaves in a deep breath and steadies her voice. “May I please come now, sir?”

John closes his eyes and swears she can feel him smile. He presses upward with his fingers and puts a steady, even pressure against her g-spot as he fucks into her deeper and faster and harder with his hand. He lifts off, kisses the inside of her thigh, and says, “Come for me, sweetheart.” He dips back down, tongue lapping faster and gentler in time with his thrusts.

 _“Fuck fuck fuck,”_ she gasps as her climax reaches its apex, body hurling toward the precipice as she loses all control. She hits the top and shouts, but she’s deaf to it, skin thrumming with wave after wave of her orgasm crashing over her. She can feel herself pulse around the two huge fingers inside of her, feel John pull slightly away as she bucks up into his face. She squeezes the sheets in her fists and but doesn’t dare close her eyes, doesn’t miss a second of John fucking Winchester moaning into her cunt as she comes, pussy juices and saliva spilling out onto the sheets, flowing onto the back of her panties until they’re completely soaked-through.

John slows as she ebbs downward and finally gets in a full, shuddered breath.

Then he suddenly speeds up again, fucking into her hard, and it takes her by such surprise that she comes immediately a second time. The second one doesn’t even climb down before a third is ripped out of her body like she has no control anymore, and maybe she doesn’t. Maybe in the span of the last few hours they’ve spent together, John’s figured her all out, knows her body better than she does, and she lets him, lets him continue pounding into her g-spot with his fingers like he owns it, lets him pull a fourth out of her, and there might even be a fifth there too, but she can’t keep track anymore. All her mind can do is sit in the passenger seat of her own pleasure as John takes control, and she hates it, loves it, it’s too much, it’s not enough, she needs more.

Tears sting the edges of her eyes and she’s begging for something again, doesn’t know what, unashamed and unafraid and open, everything in her body firing at once in euphoric bliss she’s never experienced like this. It’s not even over yet and she’s already an addict, already wants to do this every day of forever, needs it like she needs air in her lungs and water on her lips and food in her stomach.

John begins to slow down until Jo’s hips rest fully on the mattress again. He pulls his fingers out of her and kisses his way back up her other thigh as he places her ruined panties back where they were, covering her up like the show is over and it’s time for curtain call.

He crawls back to his side of the bed and collapses onto his back, eyes closed, and suddenly it’s like it was before, like she’s not actually there with him, like he can’t even see her. Newfound panic buzzes through her underneath the relaxed putty of her muscles.

With the last ounce of defiant brattiness she’s got in her, she breathes out, “Thank you… _sir_.”

***

John squeezes his eyes shut tighter and lets out a long breath through his nose.

Every time she does that, it makes his cock throb so hard that he doesn’t think there’s enough blood in his head to keep him thinking straight.

When he breathes in again, he smells Jo’s pussy all over him, her juices caked to his beard and drying. There’s this itch under his skin as he fights off the beast within him, the one who wants to fuck the teenage girl beside him wide open, tiny cunt stretched around his throbbing cock.

But if she calls him ‘sir’ one more time, he’s not sure he’s going to be able to control himself.

He can’t believe he went down on a goddamn _teenager_ , even if she is a legal adult, even if she did give him permission. It still feels wrong. There’s no way he’s going to fuck her. He can’t. He wouldn’t even fit in her. He doesn’t even have a condom—

He hears a crinkle of plastic, a hand shifting under his pillow, then opens his eyes to a bright gold condom packet shining a foot above his face.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he says.

“Girl scout always comes prepared,” she retorts, voice still high and breathy and fucked-out.

“No,” he replies, forcing his voice to sound authoritative and dismissive, and not like he’s having an internal battle with himself. “I’m not gonna fuck you. You got what you wanted. Now go to sleep.”

But of course, Jo wouldn’t be Jo if she didn’t clamor onto his hips for the second time.

He doesn’t open his eyes, doesn’t reach his hands out to grip her hips and grind her down on top of the erection still tenting his jeans, doesn’t trail his fingers up to flick at the tiny buds of her nipples. He stays still, and takes even, steady breaths.

“That wasn’t a direct order,” she says sweetly, like she didn’t just come half a dozen times on his fingers, like she’s good to go another round or ten.

Goddamn teenagers and their boundless energy.

He opens his eyes then, looks at her above him for the second time, only now her tits are exposed and she has this glassy-eyed stare about her, blissed-out and blushing all over.

She’s beautiful. She’s just so fucking beautiful. And if she doesn’t get off his dick right now, he’s gonna fuck her with it, gonna give her what she wants, gonna fill her up until she comes on his cock a dozen more times.

“Get off of me, Jo. We’re done here.”

He sounds scary even to himself, so when Jo doesn’t budge, just perches there all innocent-like, head tilted in confusion, he stares at her like she’s crazy. He’s never met anyone so utterly unfazed by him.

She shrugs, and replies, “I guess you’ll just have to punish me.”

His hands move of their own volition as he grips her hips in his grasp. She’s so tiny, he could probably meet his fingers together around her. He feels wetness seep out of her panties and dampen his jeans, smells her sex everywhere, and it’s all fraying his nerves to loose, frazzled ends.

“…sir,” she adds, and he hates that she can push his buttons so damn easy, like he’s an open book to her. It’s maddening.

His stomach lurches at the term in a not-unpleasant way, heart fluttering in his chest as he’s possessed by the beast within him, who watches as Jo reaches down and thumbs open the button of his jeans, glaring at him with an arched eyebrow, daring him to stop her.

She scoots down onto his thighs and pulls down his zipper, slow and teasing, and he bites his lower lip. Her eyes widen as she reaches into his boxers and pulls out his cock.

It’s probably the single most satisfying moment of his life. Her hand feels small against it as she wraps her fingers around and gently tugs. She stares at it curiously, mouth slightly parted, like she’s figuring out which hole it would fit best in, and the conclusion they both seem to come to simultaneously is _none_.

But that doesn’t deter her. She climbs between his legs and before he has a chance to stop her, she’s bent down and tonguing at the slit.

 _“Fuck,”_ he exhales, and moves his hand to her hair on instinct, threading his fingers through the golden strands.

She sucks the head into her mouth and swirls her tongue around it inquisitively. There’s barely enough room for her to cover her teeth with her lips, but at least she knows to do it. She lowers herself as far as she can go. He’s almost to the back of her throat and she hasn’t even gotten half of his cock in there, but it’s still a beautiful sight, especially when she looks at him through fanned lashes and this devilish glare that’s quickly becoming the single hottest thing he’s ever seen.

Words tumble out of his lips before he has a chance to shut himself up. “You like that, sweetheart? Like the taste of my cock in your mouth?”

She moans around it and _Jesus Christ,_ he can’t let her know how close he is to coming already, hasn’t been able to shoot his load this fast since he was around her age, fumbling under the bleachers at football games. It was before the war, and it feels like another lifetime, like it wasn’t even him.

But something about Jo makes him feel like it might have been, makes him feel alive again for the first time in decades. He feels wanted instead of just needed or hated. He feels young again.

He tugs gently on her hair until she lifts off of him, immediately replacing her mouth with her hand while she looks at him with this open expression, like she’s waiting for her next order now that she’s got him where she wants him.

He might be the one calling the shots, but this is still her game.

“Sit up,” he says, and she does. He sits up too and manhandles her like before until she’s on her back again and he’s between her legs. His jaw is still aching and his shoulder is sore, but he’s hard as a rock and he knows if he continues, he’s going to be feeling this tomorrow because it’s been a long goddamn time since he’s done this.

He hooks his fingers in her panties and slides them off so quickly they almost rip. She grasps at the hem of his shirt, tugging it up, so he takes it from her and pulls it off.

She reaches up and touches his chest, looks at it with this kind of wonder, like he’s something worth looking at. It makes his gut wrench with an ugly feeling he doesn’t usually let bubble to the surface, but Jo’s bringing out all sorts of old feelings in him anyway. She traces her fingers around the faded skull tattoo on his chest, one of three he got while he was deployed, then reaches up and pulls him down to her, kisses him, deep and needy and just so sweet his heart aches from it.

He breaks the kiss to rest his forehead on hers, closes his eyes as he picks up the condom on the side of the bed and grips it in hand. “You sure about this?”

She kisses him again, a small peck to his lips, and nods. “Yeah. I am.”

He doesn’t bother taking off his jeans, knows he won’t even last long enough to make it worth the effort because she’s already so damn tight, legs open wide to accommodate his frame between them. He opens the condom wrapper and rolls it on, then lines himself up, dick in hand as he presses at her entrance.

He might as well be fucking a wall for all the good it does. She’s way too small for him, and he can see her body all tensed up, fists gripping at his biceps until he can feel little crescent moons dig into the back of them.

He leans down and kisses her neck, slides against her instead. She’s still so soaked, slick with her own wetness and the condom lube. She moans as the blunt head of his cock hits her clit, and he murmurs against her neck, “Be a good girl and relax for me.”

She does, immediately, nodding through a long exhale. He slides up and down her cunt again and presses in. This time, he can fit in a little bit, but it’s so tight it almost hurts.

She gasps and he pulls out quickly. “That hurt?”

“No, no, it’s just…big. Go slow,” she says, and her voice sounds small, breath ghosting over his ear while her fingers trail up and entwine in his hair.

He pushes in again and goes a little bit further, pulls out and in again, inching his way until he’s bottomed out and Jo is panting and writhing underneath him. He gives her a moment to adjust to the size.

“You alright?” he asks, peppering her jaw with kisses, reaching up and brushing her hair away from her face.

“I’m fine,” she says, and catches his mouth, kisses him with one set of lips while pulsing tight around him with the other.

He breaks away. “You sure? We can stop—”

“No! God, no, please…please, you feel so fucking good in me. Just…fuck me open, sir. I’m ready.”

He drops his head to her shoulder and groans, hips pulling out and thrusting back in completely out of his control. She shouts at the motion, fingernails scrabbling at his back.

“Fuck yes, just like that,” she moans.

He does it again, slow and even, until she’s loosened enough that he can speed up. Her legs are wrapped tightly around him, and he begins pounding into her until the headboard is slamming onto the wall.

She’s screaming obscenities and all John can do is grunt, bury his face in her hair and fuck her with everything he’s got.

Jo scratches up a storm on his back, pushes her hips up to meet his thrusts halfway. He’s already so fucking close, mind blanking out to the white-hot heat pooling up at the pit of his stomach.

“Hold on to me,” he says, and she wraps her arms around the back of his neck.

He lifts her to sitting, arms and legs wrapped around him while he fucks up into her, gravity helping him go deeper until she’s done with her shouting and can only make these breathy moans, interrupted with a hitch every time he pounds into her.

He’s drowning in the smell of her hair and the softness of her skin, the strength of her body and the smallness of it too.

It’s all too much, but his thighs burn and he’s lost control of his body, mind unraveling with the stuttering jolts of his thrusts.

“I’m gonna…” he begins, and she squeezes him tighter, clenches around him in a way that takes the breath right out of his lungs.

“Fuck, John. Come in me, fill me up, want you to come so bad,” she grits out somewhere by his ear, and sucks the lobe of it into her mouth.

It’s such a surprising feeling that he hits the point of no return with a force that makes him cry out. He grips her hips tighter and stills her grinding on him, huge load pulsing into her as he shudders his hips deeper inside.

He lets out a breath and falls over, dragging her with him. She doesn’t untangle herself, though, doesn’t even pull off his softening dick, just lies there, limbs all entwined, and kisses him like it’s the only thing in the world that matters to her, breathing heavy and spent.

“I’m way too old for this,” he mutters against her lips.

She laughs, actually _laughs,_ for real, for the first time since he picked her up at El Greco’s. It’s the kind of sound that could stop wars, the purest kind of happiness there is.

“You’re obviously not,” she says, and kisses him again.

***

_Holy fuck._

She isn’t sure what happens immediately thereafter, but there’s a mild amount of clean-up involved.

John goes into the bathroom and comes back still shirtless but zipped back into his jeans. He hands her a cup of water, tells her to drink the whole thing, asks if there’s anything she needs.

He says it in this apathetic manner, a monotone kind of voice, but Jo is learning that’s just John, and she can’t take his words at face value as much as his actions. It’s how he communicates, she realizes, and it feels a lot like her freshman Spanish class. It was her only A the whole year.

John just speaks another language, and she can learn it just as easily as she picked up Spanish, if he’d give her the opportunity.

When she’s done with her water, he picks her up again and puts her on the other bed, the one with cool sheets and no wet spot.

There’s a terrifying moment where he hesitates, and she thinks he’s going to sleep in the other bed, dismiss her the rest of the night and pretend none of this ever happened. She’s curled up on her side, staring at the neon glow around the curtains, the bright red sixty-seven blinking on the air conditioning unit.

But then he slides himself between the covers and curls himself around her back, pulls the blankets over them and rests his heavy arm on her side. She drags her hair forward so that it’s falling around her shoulder and he kisses the nape of her neck, noses it gently and pulls her in close.

She breathes a sigh of relief, and within moments, falls asleep.

***

John comes into wakefulness to the sounds of Sammy laughing in the other room. Dean’s gotten in the habit of going into his bedroom on Sunday mornings and playing with Sam through the bars of his crib so that he wakes up happy instead of crying, lets John and Mary sleep in another half hour or so.

The laughing turns to crying, the familiar pitiful sound of needing food or a diaper change.

“I’ll get ‘im in a minute,” John mumbles against Mary’s neck.

He breathes in and smells her hair, soft locks that tickle his nose. Her skin is warm pressed against his, breathing deep like she can’t hear Sammy beginning to wail.

Light falls through the barely parted curtains and lands across his eyes, bright sun making him squeeze them shut tighter. He goes through his to do list that day: balance the auto shop books, fix the leaking faucet in the downstairs bathroom, mow the lawn. He might be able to catch the game if the boys are settled down enough in the evening.

But first, he’s going to make them all breakfast, bacon and eggs and hashbrowns. He’ll have Dean set the table before telling him to go wake his mother up. She’ll come downstairs to a fresh cup of coffee and a nice big meal, roll her eyes and scoff at him like she always does when he does something nice for her, but she’ll be smiling that big bright smile that makes everything worth it, that made the war worth fighting in, that gives him reason to wake up every morning, knowing Mary is alive and that she loves him and their little family more than anything else in the world.

It’s gonna be a good day.

He pulls away from Mary and opens his eyes, blinks them open sleepily.

His heart begins pounding in his ears when he’s not in his bedroom. The colors are muted here, nothing like the white walls of his bedroom and the navy blue of the curtains in front of the window, bright green leaves on the trees out back. Instead he’s in a dark, damp-smelling motel room. The woman in his arms isn’t Mary, and this place isn’t home, and the world is so wrong for a moment that it feels like the ground is falling out from underneath him and he’s sinking, sinking…

Gunfire. There’s gunfire and humid heat that’s suffocating him. People are screaming and a bomb goes off somewhere and then the screaming gets louder. He’s in pain, he’s been shot. He smells the acrid, copper tang of blood in the air, but all he can feel is fear coursing through his veins, blacking everything out until the only thing that remains is his pounding heart and will to survive.

“John!” he hears distantly, and then the sharp crack of an open palm across his face. “John! Snap out of it!”

He comes to, finally, heart a dull thud in his chest. He has a wrist gripped tight in his hand and a small body straddling him, messy blond hair falling over her chest, naked from the waist down.

She’s Mary, he thinks. Blonde, small, nasty right hook.

No, she’s not Mary. Mary has a mole below her collarbone, a cesarean section scar on her lower abdomen framed in stretch marks that he likes to kiss because his beard tickles her stomach. Mary doesn’t slap him when he has one of his episodes, just turns him over and holds him and whispers to him, tells him outrageous stories of her childhood in vivid detail.

This woman isn’t Mary, because Mary’s dead.

Mary’s dead.

The girl—Jo, he remembers now—rolls off of him and rubs his chest, probably feels his still-racing heart beneath her palm. “You okay, big guy? You were…doing some real weird stuff there.”

His voice doesn’t sound like his own when he speaks, it sounds older than it should, steadier, like he’s not empty and broken inside, scared and so close to crying he has to bite back the lump in his throat. “Did I hurt you?”

She lets out a nervous laugh and says, “My hand went numb for a second there, but I’ll live.”

He throws off the covers from his sweat-damp body and heads to the bathroom, turns on the water as hot as it’ll go and undresses, steps in the spray and lets it scald his skin. He ignores the droplets that run into his mouth which taste like saline, coughs through every intermittent sob that wracks his body, grits his teeth and punches at tile until the water washes away the little smears of blood his knuckles leave behind.

When he’s back to breathing normally and he stops shaking, he turns off the shower and dries himself off. He opens the door with a towel draped around his waist and Jo looking at him with her eyebrows knit into the center of her forehead.

He doesn’t meet her eyes as he picks up his duffel from the floor and scours through it for some clothes.

“We roll out at oh-nine-hundred,” he says.

After a pause, Jo scoffs, “That’s in ten minutes.”

“Better get a move on, then. I’ll meet you out front.”

***

For the first hour, the drive is silent. Jo’s wearing John’s coat again because it’s colder than it was yesterday. If John minds, he doesn’t say anything.

They come up on the first exit for miles and John asks, “You hungry?”

“Yeah, but I don’t have any cash. Didn’t have time to get my tip-out last night.”

“It’s on me.”

They park and make their way into a diner called the Hasty Tasty with brown booths and crap all over the walls, old license plates and album covers. It’s the same Americana diner that’s in every no-name town in the country, the kind that attracts hunters like magnets. The coffee’s burnt to shit, just like Jo expected, but it warms the cold homesickness in her heart, gives her a momentary thrill at the thought of going back.

John orders himself what sounds like the whole left side of the menu, and Jo gets a shortstack with a side of bacon.

“Bet you’re pretty hungry,” she says with a sly grin.

He stops staring out the window to glare at her with this deadpan exasperation in his eyes. “Don’t get cute with me.”

“Can’t help it,” she replies with a shrug. “I’m adorable.”

He doesn’t respond. Instead, they sit in silence while John skims through a folded section of the local newspaper like he honestly gives a damn about whatever-the-hell shit-town they’re passing through.

Eventually their food comes, and John continues to ignore her.

“What’s the matter?” Jo asks around a big bite of pancake.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” he says, not looking up from the paper, a forkful of hashbrown poised above his plate.

She swallows and replies, “Yes, sir.”

His eyes snap up at her then, and she swears she sees redness tinge the top of his cheekbones.

She’s making John Winchester _blush._

Stifling a giggle, she grins at him and takes another bite, waits for his jaw to stop doing that clenching thing it does before digging further. “But really…what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. Eat your food so we can head out. We’re on a tight schedule.”

“Bullshit. You’re on a recon mission to pick up a runaway. There is no ‘schedule’.” She punctuates the word between air quotes with her best impression of his stern voice.

It earns her another glare, and a response of silence as John continues fake-reading an irrelevant newspaper and pretending she doesn’t exist.

“Alright, but we got a long drive ahead of us, so if you ever feel like talking, I have an open ear. Something weird happened this morn—”

He interrupts her with a clipped, “That’s enough, Jo.”

She almost swallows her tongue with her mouth’s quickness to shut up.

They finish their meal in silence, Jo’s lips pursed in frustration. When they’re done, John tosses some cash on the table, stands up without a word and heads to the truck.

Jo grabs John’s jacket from its ball in the corner of the booth and hurries to follow him.

***

Hours pass. The sun is high in the sky, beating down on John’s left side through the window. He side-eyes Jo every so often. Sometimes she looks like she might be asleep. Sometimes she’s thumbing at the hem of his jacket, deep in thought.

She fiddles with the radio occasionally, changing the station as they drive out of the range of one and into the next.

John tells her to take her feet off the dash no fewer than ten times.

She sings sometimes with the music, in a quiet little voice that John doesn’t necessarily hate. It’s calming. It gives his mind something to focus on as the miles melt away behind them.

At one point, he has his hand laid limp on the console between them, and the next thing he knows, Jo’s reaching out with tentative fingers and entwining their hands together.

Hers are small and soft compared to his giant rough ones, and he doesn’t close his fingers around hers, keeps his hand open like he’s holding a baby bird.

She breathes out a laugh and reaches over with her other hand to fold his fingers over hers, rest them together so that they’re holding hands properly. “I’m not gonna break.”

“I know,” he mutters. “Just don’t wanna hurt you.”

“You won’t,” she replies. “I trust you.”

He remembers the feel of her body against him, open and innocent and wanting. He brings her hand up to his lips, kisses the back of it while keeping his eyes on the road. He can’t see her, but she squeezes in response, and they hold hands the rest of the way to Nebraska.

***

Ellen cries when Jo gets home, hugs her close until she thinks her ribs might break, cradles the back of her head and thanks God for bringing her baby back alive.

It’s short-lived, though. The moment she pulls away, she’s yelling at Jo, slamming things around the bar in preparation for the evening rush, accusing her and telling her all the horrible things that could have happened.

She gets John a whiskey without him having to ask, still shouting up a storm as he sidles onto a stool.

“Where was she? What was she doing?” she finally asks John with a glint in her eye.

Jo stands there awkwardly, still wearing John’s coat and feeling smaller than she’s ever felt in her whole life.

But there’s a nice ache between her legs. It makes her slide onto the stool next to John carefully, throbs dully as she shifts in her seat.

“Biggerson’s in Kansas City. Got a serving gig. Roomed up with a couple coworkers,” John replies, and sips at his whiskey.

Jo’s heart swells with gratitude.

“Is this true?” Ellen asks her.

Jo nods. “Yes, ma’am.”

“No partying? No drugs? No hunting?”

“No, ma’am. Just working to earn my own keep, that’s all.”

Ellen nods, but her eyes remain narrowed as she wipes down the bar.

Ash comes in then, spouting some kind of techno-babble Jo doesn’t understand. He stops and looks between the three of them, then between John and Jo, giving them both his calculating stare, the kind that tells Jo he’s working something complicated out in his brain, and holds his hand up for John to high-five.

“Nice,” he says with a knowing nod.

John looks at him like he’s crazy and swats his hand away.

Jo fiddles with the hem of John’s jacket and tries to hide the blush creeping up her face.

Ellen looks even more suspicious.

The tension breaks when John gulps down the rest of his whiskey and sets the glass back on the bar. “I better be heading out,” he says as he slides off the stool again. “Thanks for the drink.”

Jo begins to shrug off his jacket, but as John passes behind her, he says, “Keep it. I got another.”

She turns and stares up at him, can’t read the expression on his face, but she doesn’t buy it that he has another, knows he just wants her to keep it as a parting gift to remember him by. “Thanks.”

He slaps her once on the back, then nods to both Ellen and Ash, and leaves the bar.

When the door swings shut, Jo stands up, trying not to wince, and points after him. “I’m just gonna…say goodbye.”

“Make it quick,” Ellen says. “We got work to do.”

***

As he opens the door to his truck, he hears quick footsteps on the gravel behind him.

He turns around to find Jo already in his personal space, gripping the front of his shirt and dragging him down into a fierce kiss.

He kisses back at first, leans into it, revels for a small moment in the softness of her lips and the intensity of it.

Then he realizes where they are, which is approximately a hundred yards away from a woman who would literally kill him for this, then bring him back from the dead just so she could kill him a second time, so he pulls away.

He grabs her by the wrist and takes her around to the other side of the truck so that they’re hidden from the view of the bar.

He presses her against the passenger door and slots their lips together again, kisses her like it’ll be his last, because it just might be.

Jo makes him feel different than anyone else does. Around her, he’s not a hunter or a dad or a widower or any other jagged fractions that make up his identity. He’s just a person. A whole one.

He breaks the kiss and rests his forehead on hers, looks into her eyes, sweeps the pad of his thumb over her cheekbone while the rest of his hand cradles her delicate neck.

“When am I gonna see you again?” she asks, searching his face for the truth because they both know he’s going to lie.

“Soon,” he says, mustering up so much conviction he almost believes himself.

Something behind her eyes breaks when the understanding dawns on her.

He’s not going to come back. Not tomorrow or next month or next year. His days are numbered and they’re counting down fast.

Her chin trembles a little, and he shakes his head. “Don’t you dare cry, Joanna Beth.”

She steels her face and bites her lip, lifts up and kisses him again, wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him in close.

The kiss lasts for minutes, maybe hours, maybe days. He forces himself to pay attention to every second of it, remember the sweet taste of her and the feel of her small mouth, every nip of his lip and sweep of her tongue against his. He wants to remember this the way he wants to forget everything else.

The sun is setting behind them, casting a dull orange glow over the rocks and dirt that surround them. The air is crisp and still, and it smells like spring. John’s coat is too big for Jo’s body, but he thinks about her falling asleep wearing it sometimes, curling up in it and being the only person left alive who will remember John the way he wants to be remembered.

He pulls away again, can’t meet her eyes, but stares instead at her hand as he threads their fingers together. “You be good,” he says, taking a step back.

When she doesn’t reply, he meets her gaze.

“You should call Dean,” she says. “Promise me.”

It’s the last thing John expected her to say. He didn’t even know she knew about Dean, but the hunter world is small, and word travels fast.

He nods, because he has to leave her with something, even though he doesn’t have much to give. He can give her this, though.

“I will,” he says.

“Good,” she replies, and smiles. It’s small and sad, but it still makes something wrench in his heart. “And I’ll do my best to make you proud of me.”

John huffs a laugh and shakes his head, reaches up and thumbs at her chin. “Just do what it takes to make you proud of yourself.”

She nods and starts backing up down the length of the truck, still holding John’s fingers until she’s far enough that they have to break away.

John’s hand falls back to his side.

She bites down on her lower lip again and her chin is back to trembling. Her voice cracks as she says, “Just…try to stay safe out there, you hear me?”

He nods. “I will.”

“And when you drag that fucker back down to hell,” she begins, and the tears are welled-up in her eyes now, her face is going red, and she punctuates what she says next with a single shake of her head, “I want you to enjoy every second of it.”

He nods again, the corner of his lip twitching up. “I will.”

“Good,” she nods, more to herself than to him. “Good.” She drops his gaze, then turns around and walks toward the building until he can’t see her anymore, can’t hear her footsteps. The only sounds are the muffled music coming from the bar and the caw of birds overhead, and then, finally, the crunch of gravel under John’s feet as he circles around the truck.

He takes a deep breath and opens the door, climbs inside, and shifts it into gear, turning out of the Roadhouse parking lot for what he knows will be the last time.

He stops at a crossroads, looks back and forth between east and west.

No one’s around, so he pulls his phone out of his pocket and flips it open, dials Dean’s number and puts the receiver to his ear.

Dean answers on the second ring. “Dad?”

“It’s me.”

“Jesus, I was worried sick. Where are you? Are you okay?”

A knot wells up in John’s throat as he replies, “I’m alright. You still out west?”

“Got wind of a lead on the outskirts of Tacoma. I’m headed there now.”

“Need any help?”

Dean laughs, and it’s a sound that hasn’t changed at all since he was a kid. “Yeah. Hell yeah. That’d be awesome.”

“I’ll meet you out there in a couple days,” John says, then pauses before adding, “Good job on the Denver case, by the way.”

“Thanks.” Dean sounds genuinely thrilled. John hasn’t heard him this happy in years. “I’ll tell you all about it when you get here.”

“Sounds good.” There’s a silence on the line that stretches for several seconds before John says, “I’m proud of you, son.”

More silence.

“Thanks, Dad,” Dean says, like he can’t believe it, and it makes John’s gut churn that he ever did this to his boy. He never meant for any of this to happen, never wanted this life for his sons, never wanted to treat them like soldiers in a war they’ve got no business fighting in.

But that’s exactly what John did, blinded by his broken, worthless heart and the taste of vengeance on his tongue.

Dean adds, “I’ll see you in a couple days, alright?”

“A couple days,” John repeats. “See you then.”

He hangs up, tosses his phone on the console, and leans forward to turn on the radio. It’s an old Patsy Cline tune; sounds a lot like Jo, actually, with her bluesy-country voice that John already misses hearing.

He remembers the way Jo looked at him, held his hand like she’d forgiven him for every wrong he’d ever done, and would continue forgiving him thereafter. He knows he doesn’t deserve it, isn’t worth that kind of compassion, but it fuels him forward nonetheless, lifts the burden from his heart for just a moment.

John hums along with the radio, flips on his turn signal, and heads west.

**Author's Note:**

> Title modified from [El Greco's _The Adoration of the Shepherds_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adoration_of_the_Shepherds_%28El_Greco%29).
> 
> Beta'd by my personal morsel of heaven, [shiphitsthefan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/shiphitsthefan).
> 
> If you dug this fic, you can [reblog the gifset](http://bettydays.tumblr.com/post/115084467452/adoration-of-the-shepherd-pre-canon-jo2-nsfw), complete with photos of the actual El Greco's with the actual red carpet on the walls and Christmas lights, and the actual Hasty Tasty. (Unfortunately the Lion's Den isn't a motel, it's a sex toy store on I-75.)


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